Affiliate disclosure: what the FTC actually requires

Monetization design includes whether disclosure is present. This page sets out what the FTC requires of publishers who earn from what they recommend, where the requirement comes from, what the 2023 revision changed, and what a disclosure has to look like to survive scrutiny. It is a summary of published guidance, not legal advice, and it describes United States rules.

The short answer

If you have any relationship with a company that your audience would not reasonably expect, and you say something positive about that company’s product, you have to disclose it. The disclosure has to be clear, has to be unavoidable, and has to sit close to the recommendation rather than in a footer or at the bottom of the page.

A sitewide disclosure page is not sufficient. A line at the end of a 3,000 word review is unlikely to be sufficient. The phrase affiliate link on its own may not be sufficient, because the FTC has questioned whether readers understand what it means. Plain language placed above the first link is the standard that is hard to argue with.

Where the requirement comes from

The governing law is Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices. Nothing in it mentions blogs, affiliate links or endorsements. The theory is simpler than that: a recommendation that appears independent while being paid for is deceptive, because the reader is evaluating it under a false assumption about the endorser’s motive.

The Endorsement Guides, at 16 CFR Part 255, exist to help businesses conform to Section 5. They are guidance rather than a rule with its own penalties, and they were substantially revised in 2023. The revision added an explicit definition of clearly and conspicuously, broadened the treatment of endorsements that reach children, and addressed platforms whose tools make adequate disclosure difficult.

A second instrument is worth knowing about because it does carry penalties directly. The FTC’s Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, finalised in 2024, prohibits fake and misleading reviews, undisclosed insider reviews, buying positive or negative reviews, suppressing negative reviews to create a misleading overall impression, and misrepresenting indicators of social influence. Unlike the Guides, violations of a rule can carry civil penalties. For a publisher who reviews products, or who runs a review section, this is the more consequential of the two.

The FTC has also issued penalty offense notices on endorsements to a large number of companies, which is a mechanism for establishing the knowledge required to seek civil penalties for conduct the Commission has already ruled unlawful. The practical effect is that the exposure attached to endorsement violations is higher than the guidance-only framing suggests.

What triggers a disclosure

The requirement attaches to a material connection: any relationship between an endorser and a marketer that an audience would not reasonably expect, and that might affect how much weight the audience gives the endorsement.

It is broader than most publishers assume. It includes:

• Affiliate commission, referral fees and revenue share
• Flat sponsorship fees, whether or not the content was reviewed by the sponsor
• Free product, whether or not it was requested and whether or not it was returned
• Discounts, credits and comped services
• Early access, exclusive access, review units and press trips
• Employment, consulting relationships and equity
• Family or close personal relationships with the company or its staff
• Entry into a contest or giveaway in exchange for posting

Two points about scope catch people out. It applies whether or not you genuinely like the product: an honest positive opinion about something you were paid to write about is still an endorsement with a material connection. And it applies to negative and neutral coverage too, because the connection is what the reader needs to evaluate, not the verdict.

What clear and conspicuous means

The 2023 revision defines this rather than leaving it to interpretation. A disclosure must be difficult to miss and easily understandable by ordinary consumers. Specific requirements follow from that:

• Unavoidable. Not something a reader has to look for, hover over, expand, scroll past or click through to find.
• Same means and mode as the claim. A visual claim needs a visual disclosure. An audio claim needs an audio disclosure. Video that makes a claim in speech needs the disclosure in speech, not only in a description field.
• Long enough to read. For anything time-limited, the disclosure must remain available long enough to be noticed and read.
• Not contradicted or mitigated by anything else in the content.
• Not buried in a block of unrelated text or in fine print styled to recede.

The guiding principle underneath all of it is proximity: the closer the disclosure sits to the recommendation, the better. That single sentence resolves most placement questions without needing to consult anything else.

Where the disclosure has to go

Practical consequences for a blog, stated as plainly as the guidance permits:

• A link in the site header, footer or sidebar is not sufficient on its own. A reader arriving from search onto one article has not agreed to your sitewide terms.
• A dedicated disclosure page is not sufficient on its own, for the same reason. It is worth having, and it is not the disclosure.
• A disclosure at the bottom of an article is unlikely to qualify, because the recommendation and the disclosure should ideally be visible at the same time. A reader who clicked an affiliate link in paragraph four never reached it.
• Each post is treated as a separate advertisement. A publisher cannot assume a reader saw the disclosure on a different post, or last month, or on the about page.
• Behind an accordion, a tooltip, a read more toggle or a modal is not unavoidable, and therefore not conspicuous.
• In a long review, one disclosure at the top is the safest structure, with a repeat before any comparison table or pricing block that appears well below the fold.

The defensible pattern for an affiliate post is a short disclosure in the body copy, in the same typeface and size as the surrounding text, positioned above the first monetised link, on every post that contains one. Anything that requires an argument about whether it counts is a design problem worth fixing rather than a position worth defending.

Wording

The FTC has raised a specific concern that consumers may not understand what affiliate link means. It is jargon that describes the mechanism rather than the relationship, and a reader who does not already work in this industry has no reason to know it implies payment.

Plainer constructions are safer, because they communicate the two facts a reader actually needs: that money changes hands, and that it changes hands because of this link.

Length is not the variable that matters. A single clear sentence outperforms a paragraph of hedged legal phrasing, because the requirement is comprehension rather than volume.

Two things frequently confused with FTC disclosure

Link attributes are a search requirement, not a legal one

Google asks that paid, sponsored and affiliate links carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". This is a search engine guideline about passing ranking signals. It is not disclosure, it does nothing for the reader, and it satisfies no FTC requirement.

The reverse also holds: a visible disclosure does not satisfy Google’s guideline. Both are required and they are unrelated to each other. A publisher who has set rel attributes and considers the disclosure question handled has satisfied the search engine and not the regulator.

Platform and network terms are additional, not equivalent

Affiliate programs impose their own contractual disclosure requirements, and some specify wording. The Amazon Associates Operating Agreement is the most widely encountered example and requires a specific statement. Satisfying a network’s contract does not establish FTC compliance, and satisfying the FTC does not satisfy the network. Both apply, and the network can terminate an account for the contractual failure regardless of the legal position.

Outside the United States

Everything above is the United States regime. Others differ in ways that matter if any meaningful share of the audience sits elsewhere.

In the United Kingdom, the Advertising Standards Authority and the Competition and Markets Authority expect prominent labelling, with Ad or Advertisement at the start of the content rather than the end, and the requirement is enforced more prescriptively about wording than the US approach. In the European Union, the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive covers the same ground with member-state variation in enforcement. Several jurisdictions treat undisclosed paid endorsement as an offence with direct penalties rather than as guidance.

A publisher with an international audience is generally best served by the strictest applicable standard, since a prominent plain-language disclosure at the top of the post satisfies all of them simultaneously.

How this is scored

Disclosure presence and placement are checkable from public evidence, which is why they sit inside Monetization design rather than being treated as unverifiable. The band definitions list disclosure explicitly at band 5, alongside a stated policy and inventory that is packaged rather than sold per placement.

What a teardown checks, in order:

1. Whether monetised links exist at all, identified from the destination URL and any tracking parameters
2. Whether a disclosure appears on the post itself rather than only sitewide
3. Where it sits relative to the first monetised link
4. Whether the wording states that the publisher is paid, in terms a reader would parse
5. Whether it appears consistently across posts or only on some
6. Whether rel attributes are set, recorded separately as a search hygiene finding rather than a disclosure one

The scoring logic is worth stating because it surprises people: a publisher with well-designed, well-priced, non-intrusive inventory and no disclosure is not scored higher for the design. Disclosure is not a bonus applied on top of a good commercial surface. It is a condition of the top band, on the grounds that an undisclosed commercial surface is not a designed one, it is a concealed one.

Nothing here is a safe harbour. The FTC is explicit that whether a particular disclosure is sufficient depends on context, and that following its guidance does not create immunity from liability.

Questions

Is a disclosure page enough if I link to it from every post?

No. The disclosure has to be unavoidable, and a link is something a reader chooses whether to follow. Put the disclosure itself in the post.

Do I need to disclose on old posts?

If they still contain monetised links and are still reachable, they are still making the recommendation. An audit of the archive is unglamorous and is the correct answer.

What if the product was free but I was not paid?

Free product is a material connection. Disclose that it was provided at no charge. Whether you kept it, returned it or gave it away does not remove the connection at the time you wrote about it.

Does this apply to a newsletter as well as the site?

Yes. The medium does not change the requirement, and the same-means-and-mode principle means an email that makes the recommendation needs the disclosure in the email, not only on the web version.

Is #ad sufficient on its own?

It can be, when it is genuinely unavoidable and appears before the endorsement rather than inside a block of other hashtags. The failure is almost never the word and almost always the placement.

Sources

• FTC, The Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking
• FTC, Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers
• FTC, Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials
• Google Search Central, Qualify your outbound links

Guidance verified August 2026. Applies to United States rules only, and summarises published guidance rather than providing legal advice. The Endorsement Guides were revised in 2023 and the reviews rule was finalised in 2024, so this page records the state of the guidance on the date given. Publishers elsewhere should check their own regime, and anyone with real exposure should take advice from a lawyer rather than from a blog about blogs.